Baseball is changing. All things change over time, even a game that prides itself on consistency and a continuity spanning nearly a century and a half. Baseball has always been changing, but often those changes have been small, or have been part of an ebb and flow in which periods of imbalance have given way to a restored equilibrium. The changes happening in the game today, however, show no sign of slowing down, no sign of slipping back toward equilibrium. As we near the end of the first month of the 2018 season, changes the game has undergone in recent seasons have only become more extreme.

By this point, even casual fans are likely familiar with the fact that strikeout rates have been on a steady rise for a while now. To be specific, the league-wide strikeout rate has increased every year since 2006, setting an all-time record with 17.5 percent of plate appearances ending in a strikeout in 2008. That record has been broken every year since, topping out at 21.6 percent last...

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